Review: Samsung Gravity Smart

The Samsung Gravity Smart has Bluetooth 3.0 on board, and supports the typical batch of profiles, such as A2DP, PBA, and OPP. Pairing with devices such as mono and stereo headsets, as well as laptops was no problem. Call quality through mono headsets was not all that great. The muffled sound of the phone came through the bluetooth headsets I have on hand, and the volume was never enough. Using stereo Bluetooth speakers was OK, but I noticed the music cut in and out more than average during playback.

Clock

Press the power/lock key and you'll see a nice, large digital clock on the Gravity Smart's home screen. It's perfectly visible indoors, but much harder to see outside. This clock can't be altered or changed. The clock application found in the main menu only interacts with alarms, time zones, and such.

DriveSmart

The Gravity Smart is one of the first devices from T-Mobile to ship with the DriveSmart application on board. The free version of DriveSmart lets users control the behavior of their phone while in the car driving. For example, it can be used to route calls directly to voicemail or to Bluetooth systems. It can also send automatic SMS messages, such as, "I am driving yo, will talk at ya later." These messages can be customized. The downside is that the free version preinstalled doesn't turn on automatically when you start driving. You have to manually tell the software that you are, in fact, driving. The premium version can detect when the phone is moving at car speeds and will automatically switch into DriveSmart mode. The idea is to prevent you from becoming distracted when on the road. Of course, if you have any amount of self control, this app isn't necessary at all.

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GPS

The Gravity Smart comes loaded with Google Maps/Navigation and TeleNav. Both are capable pieces of software for creating maps between points. TeleNav's navigation services makes it a bit easier to find nearby points of interest, and is faster at re-routing you if you get lost, but Google Maps is no slouch either. Google Maps is free, of course, and TeleNav's services cost $10 per month.